Photo Credit and Photo Copyright

The photographs of San Antonio and Dignowity Hill used within this blog are the property of Juan A Garcia East Light Images. All rights are reserved to the owner. Copy and use of these pictures is forbidden without written permission. Contact Juan at jagarciatx@gmail.com for permission.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Some Cool Stuff

Life is interesting at times. There's lots of things going on in and around the neighborhood. At our last neighborhood association meeting we had the police chief, the Eastside substation captain and our neighborhood SAFFE cops in attendance. The meeting was well attended, lots of folks that hadn't attended a meeting in awhile showed up. The chief and his troops gave a nice talk.
Our meeting that evening was probably the safest place in San Antonio!

Activities with the neighborhood association are gaining some momentum. About a month ago we applied for a mini grant from the city for funding to do a community fair and it was approved. Then I got a call from the city planning division wanting to discuss a re-investment plan focused on Dignowity Hill. This initiative has the potential of truly revitalizing the area in terms of real investment in the neighborhood. We're also going to apply for some free trees. The city through it's neighborhood tree challenge program will give us up to 25 trees for residences or park spaces. So a little committee has formed to get this tree show on the road. Come this fall we should have several new trees in our two parks and in some of our neighbors yards

Besides the Hays Street Bridge restoration, another cool happening is the opening of the River Walk extension north of downtown. This is great because it is a literal 10-15 minute walk from our neighborhood to this wonderful extension of San Antonio's famous River Walk.















City elections were held earlier this month and our city council district race went undecided because no one received a majority of the vote. So a run off election between the two top vote getter's is scheduled for June. My hope is that whoever gets in will be more responsive to the concerns of the district neighborhoods. Things can only improve after a poor showing from the previous council person's track record and strained relationship with our neighborhood.

The economy still stinks although there are signs of improvement and many folks are still struggling to keep things together but lately things have gotten a little interesting, maybe even a little hopeful, on Dignowity Hill.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Hays Street Bridge Project Gets Going!

Finally after a few years of planning and discussion, the Hays Street Bridge restoration was initiated. On Saturday May 9th the project was kicked off with a ceremony. Within a couple of days demolition of the old approaches began. By the end of the 1st week the old planks on the bridge it self were gone! We went by to look at the progress over the weekend. It is so cool to see this actually happening. Another sign that things are beginning to change in our historic neighborhood!